Harold Boyd Woodruff
Harold Boyd Woodruff , called Boyd Woodruff (born July 22, 1917 in Bridgeton , New Jersey , † January 19, 2017 in Watchung , New Jersey), was an American microbiologist .
Woodruff came from a family of farmers who were forced to give up during the Great Depression . The family temporarily moved to Buffalo, New York , Virginia and Florida during this time (his mother was prone to lung disease during the winter months) before moving back to New Jersey (Hopewill Township). Woodruff studied at Rutgers University (bachelor's degree in 1939), where he received his doctorate in microbiology with Selman Waksman in 1942 and did research at the New Jersey Agricultural Experimental Station. In his dissertation, he studied microorganisms in the soil and discovered the antibiotics actinomycin and streptothricin . Inspired by this, another Waksman employee, Albert Schatz , discovered streptomycin . Woodruff successfully sued Schatz and Waksman for shares in this discovery and received two percent of the proceeds, from which he funded a scholarship for students of microbiology at Rutgers University. Woodruff spent his career from 1942 at Merck & Co. , where he was involved in the implementation of the mass production of penicillin during World War II. In 1949 he became deputy director and in 1957 director of the microbiology department, from 1969 to 1973 executive director of Biological Sciences and from 1973 to 1982 he was executive administrator of the research laboratories of Merck Sharp & Dohme in Japan. He was in charge of the industrial production of various antibiotics, vitamin B 12 (cyanocobalamin), vitamin C, riboflavin , a vaccine against pneumonia, chemotherapy against nephroblastoma (Wilms tumor) and avermectins ( ivermectin , used against river blindness ).
His discovery of antibiotics in soil microorganisms in the 1940s was a major breakthrough in antibiotic research. It led to streptomycin (for which Waksman received the Nobel Prize), which was effective against many germs that did not respond to penicillin (for example tuberculosis, typhoid, plague).
In 2011 he received the NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science for various antibiotics, vitamin B 12 and the avermectins . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1973 he received the Charles Thom Award from the Society of Industrial Microbiology.
In 1942 he married Jeanette Whitner (1920–2015) and had two sons. After retiring in 1982, he and his wife founded Soil Microbiology Associates.
He was the founding director of Applied Microbiology . The bacterium Seleniivibrio woodruffii , obtained from sewage in New Jersey, is named in his honor.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dates of birth according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Woodruff, Harold Boyd |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Woodruff, Boyd; Woodruff, H. Boyd |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American microbiologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 22, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bridgeton , New Jersey |
| DATE OF DEATH | 19th January 2017 |
| Place of death | Watchung , New Jersey |